NEMO et al.

The Internet was aroused by the fact that in the scientific system the truth of Moscow University was discovered by the user's page "and others". The excitement did not go unnoticed, and the page was immediately removed, now the message “An error has occurred in its place. Sorry to bother you. An error message was sent to the administrators. " But then, in addition to screenshots, there was a page of another outstanding scientist “et al”, as well as a number of more modest authors, for example, “aa aa aa”.

It is interesting to compare their data. Professor et al has a little more than one and a half times more articles, but more than three times more quotation. In terms of all the other parameters, he hopelessly loses - he has almost no monographs and reports at conferences, he does not write a single scientific report (which means he does not receive grants either), he does not have awards, and he neglects with teaching: under his leadership, not a single dissertation and even a diploma is developed, and only one educational course has been developed - this is compared to almost one and a half hundred courses Professor Idra.

All this is a good illustration of discussing publication strategies of Moscow State University; Moreover, the situation is not as terrible as it would be possible to assume: IRA articles are quoted on average 20 times, and et al - thirty. AA AA AA is much inferior - he has a little more than one citation for the article.

Professor IDR

Professor et al

Aa aa aa

All this is funny, but not so new. Readers of my tape on Facebook (which, by the way, express my gratitude for some finds), of course, remembered the second lieutenant, but he also had predecessors. Apparently, the first similar character was Nemo, Vir Perfectus, the hero of numerous medieval parodies; A sample of such a text in the translation of M. L. Gasparov was published in the remarkable collection “Vagant's Poetry” in small “Little Men” [1]; It is available on the Internet [ 2 ]. And then, as now, the reader was found without a sense of humor, the theologian Stefan, who wrote a completely serious treatise against the Neminian sect [ 3 ]. It should be mentioned that no one was also outstanding - for his time - scientists:

The third I say: this was no one great multiplier, and he knew who worthy of love, who hatred; And in the grammar he was such a connoisseur that Glovan himself admits: "And no one in my comrades."

As well as in arithmetic, he was known, according to the apostle: “No one could count such a great many people” (Rev. 7, 9).

It is also great in music, according to the revelation: “No one could learn this song” (14, 3).

Even the prophet was, which is why Luke said: “No one is a prophet in his Fatherland” (4, 24).

The authors are cited abundantly, IDEM (IDEM) and Demzelben (demselben, in the literature in German) [ 4 ]. However, the chemist and astrologer (yeah!) Felix Velichko, the author of the quoted note about Demzelben, apparently did not know (and the stars did not prompted) that he had a predecessor: one of the important plot turns in “Materials for the biography of Gorgis Katafalaki” Sigismund Krzhizhanovsky are the search in Berlin of Dr. Dromelb erudition and research scope , the author of essays such as “Spirils and spirochets. Berlin, 1911 "; “The history of philosophy from ancient times to the present day. London, 1911 "; “More about transfinite values. Stuttgart, 1911 "; “66 ways to boil the egg. Magdeburg, 1911 "; “Crisis of Europe. Munich, 1911 "; “On the languages ​​of the Bantu group. Leipzig, 1911 "; “The art of being cold -blooded in 6 lessons. Rome, 1911 ”[ 5 ]. (As soon as it came to the priorities, one cannot but mention that the main character of the story written in 1929 died, falling out of absent -mindedness under the tram. However, the story was not published; the author read it on the Nikitinsky subbotniks, but Bulgakov was not their participant.)

Biologists, speaking of ghosts, of course, will recall the “yeast Baker” and a little less often encountered “yeast Brier”, which can be found not only in popular, but also in supposedly professional literature and even in patents [ 6 ].

In conclusion, I will invite interested readers to independently look for publication in different useful databases on various combinations of “Author: Salad”, “Author: Sandwich”, “Author: Pizza”, “Author: Burger”, etc., some of them even indicated citation (for example, I managed to succeed. Find allegedly quoted twice and published in six versions the text of “Monday” with the following set of authors: it sub, G. Chicken, C. Salad, C. pizza, P. pizza, and I know that this is not a record).

Mikhail Gelfand